In an unprecedented rebuke of a sitting president’s actions, Special Counsel David Weiss has issued a scathing report criticizing President Joe Biden’s comments surrounding the pardon of his son Hunter. The report, released Monday, marks a significant moment in the complex saga of the Hunter Biden investigations, highlighting growing tensions between the Justice Department and the White House.
Special counsel defends integrity of Hunter Biden investigations
Weiss emphatically defended the Justice Department’s handling of the cases that led to Hunter Biden’s felony convictions, asserting that the investigations were conducted with complete impartiality. “These baseless accusations have no merit and repeating them threatens the integrity of the justice system as a whole,” Weiss stated in the report.
The special counsel specifically addressed President Biden’s November statement, in which the president suggested his son had faced differential treatment due to his surname. Weiss firmly rejected this characterization, stating, “The president’s characterizations are incorrect based on the facts in this case, and, on a more fundamental level, they are wrong.”
Presidential pardon controversy
While acknowledging that previous presidents have issued pardons to family members, Weiss took issue with the manner in which President Biden executed his son’s pardon. The report noted that no other president had used a family pardon “as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations.”
The investigations, which began before Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, resulted in gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. These convictions were later nullified by President Biden’s pardon.
The full details of Weiss’s findings can be found in the official report, which represents the conclusion of years of investigations that have captured significant attention on Capitol Hill and created a notable divide between the Justice Department and the White House.
